Heard of gray predators? These are elderly people who are victims of crime, from petty theft to murder. They are targeted because age slows down their responses to sudden moves against them, usually theft.
The digital age has increased digital assaults on a massive scale, most alarmingly through the stealing of digital information. In many cases, lolo or lola willingly surrenders digital information (passwords) to relatives and people they think they can trust, which may as well be tantamount to opening one’s safe to allow their trusted ones total access to wealth: cash, credit cards, land titles, and more. Ironically, as we develop more sophisticated digital safeguards, we find that they have become easier to breach safety protocols, particularly the signatures.
In fact, the elderly are victimized more and more through simpler methods: sweet talk. All you need is a clever young relative looking over your shoulder as you are inputting a password on a form or device to allow modern-day versions of Alibaba’s thieves, and all it takes is one thief. Other elderly people just hand over their ATM cards and/or Government Service Insurance System and Social Security System cards, after a relative “kindly” offers to handle the cumbersome withdrawals.
I wanted to concentrate today on gray predators of a different kind. Here, the predator(s) are themselves senior citizens.
The scariest ones are those who are actually authorized to handle digital information. They can be people working in your bank, government office, or collecting office. We’ve seen so much of this done through public works, but it seems it doesn’t even have to be done through official channels.
I still remember a rich barangay in Makati that overpriced its purchases of street lights. It was a major scandal that led to the officials’ ouster.
A recent ongoing case was uncovered when a security guard agency threatened to cut off their services to a barangay, saying they had not been paid by the neighborhood association. It turned out the collections had been made by residents, but one unscrupulous official in the association was pocketing the collections. I haven’t figured out how this was done but it seems there just wasn’t enough oversight going on—officials were all too busy and left the collections to the treasurer. In another case, at a major university office, collections were dutifully made, but receipts were questionable.
In the end, though, it seems old-fashioned sweet talk is probably still the most popular criminal modus when victimizing gray prey. Remember the predators approaching the elderly with some information they have about an elderly resident and claiming to know a relative, information obtained from talking with drivers and other household employees.
The thief says she’s short on money, or needs to help a sick relative. The amounts may be small but accumulate and can run into several thousands. In the stories told to me, it seems it’s in richer barangays where amounts are much higher, with the thief claiming the employer is unable to make the appeal personally because they were in an accident.
One amazing case had someone claiming she was trying to help an old man who needed money for a “palit-ulo” case—the old man’s son had been arrested for drug trafficking, which carried very serious penalties. But the “kind” people working in the penitentiary offered to get his son out if the price was right, in a “palit-ulo” scheme, which literally means “swapping heads.” There are poor enough petty criminals willing to serve out a prison sentence, or at least a part of it, if someone needs to have a convicted relative out of jail—exchange heads, as the expression goes. This includes elderly women needing money and figuring they can sacrifice their old age for the family.
Why the elderly? Although many of the elderly are often cash-strapped too, it’s the elderly who may have larger amounts of cash on hand, the proverbial “under the mattress” emergency not-so-petty fund.
The compassion factor is easier to mobilize with the elderly. More people have become almost like family. After I finished my term as chancellor at the University of the Philippines, I was approached by the daughter of a barangay official. She appealed to my friendship with the barangay official, now retired. I never got paid back and I didn’t want to press the case since I knew the barangay official had financial problems too.
Just remember it’s almost impossible to retrieve financial loans. You could try a promissory note and keep your fingers crossed but a promissory note is only as good as an IOU note scribbled on pad paper.
My mother would lend money out in exchange for a land title as a guarantee. She always said she knew land titles don’t have any legal value but always thought they had some moral hold and that many would pay back the debt. But people seemed more honorable before and many would pay back the debt on time.
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michael.tan@inquirer.net